


The Happiness Quotient

by Poe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Civil War didn't happen and Bucky's living with Steve, First Kisses, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Happy National Writing Day, I doubt any therapist would recommend Tinder, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sequel Coming At Some Point, Therapy, To Be Read With A Brooklyn Accent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 12:16:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15072974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poe/pseuds/Poe
Summary: “She asked me again,” Bucky says, unprompted, as he slouches into the room and throws himself face down onto the couch, feet landing in Steve’s lap, socked toes butting into Steve’s thighs.“What did she ask you?” Steve asks, pinching slightly at Bucky’s big toe, and earning a squeak in response.“You know,” Bucky grumbles, voice muffled by the couch cushions.“Humour me.”“What makes me happy.”





	The Happiness Quotient

“She asked me again,” Bucky says, unprompted, as he slouches into the room and throws himself face down onto the couch, feet landing in Steve’s lap, socked toes butting into Steve’s thighs.

Steve puts his book down, and settles in to listen. Therapy is far from Bucky’s favourite chore, and afterwards he likes to decompress, to do impressions of the psychologist, to mock and to deride. Maybe it makes it easier to bear somehow.

“What did she ask you?” Steve asks, pinching slightly at Bucky’s big toe, and earning a squeak in response.

“You know,” Bucky grumbles, voice muffled by the couch cushions.

“Humour me.”

“What makes me _happy_ ,” Bucky says, sarcasm heavy in his voice. If his arms weren’t pinned beneath his body, Steve knows he’d be doing air quotes.

This is a recurring question. Bucky struggles with it a lot. Because after everything he’s been through? The things he’s seen? It’d be like asking a blind man to describe a rainbow.

“She’s only trying to help you, ya know,” Steve says, instead. He wonders when he became the voice of reason, when the world got that far off its axis.

“So why doesn’t she just tell me then? She obviously knows. She’s just doin’ it to – like cruel and unusual torture at this point, Stevie,” Bucky complains, and moves to flip over onto his front, nearly falling off the couch in the process. He still carries himself with the grace of the winter soldier when needs be, but when needs don’t be, he allows an air of clumsiness which is both endearing and heart breaking.

“Maybe you gotta say it,” Steve says, rubbing Bucky’s ankle bone idly with his thumb. Bucky sighs and melts slightly.

“But I don’t _know_. That’s the point. That’s why I’m going to see her. So I can stop being so fuckin’ depressed or whatever bullshit label they’ve given me this week,” Bucky grouses.

“So that’s why she’s asking you. So you figure it out,” Steve says.

“Why do I gotta be happy? Like, can’t we settle for mildly content or somethin’? Happy is like, seventy years ago and a war ago.”

“You tell her that?” Steve asks.

Bucky murmurs an affirmative. “She ain’t buyin’ it. Says there’s gotta be something that makes me happy in this century. Said sometimes it can be like, something I wanna do, or sometimes it can be something I do every day. Like, I think I’d realise, right?”

“So what do you wanna do?” Steve asks, ghosting his thumb over the knobble of Bucky’s ankle again.

“I like not doing anything, that’s the thing. She’s like, oh, gotta have goals. Can’t I just… not have goals for a while? Bet you didn’t have to deal with this shit.”

Steve shrugs. Fair point. Captain America doesn’t have mental health issues. Officially, anyway. Instead of arguing the point, he says, “You don’t gotta do anything you don’t want to. Not ever again.”

“And she’s like ‘James, you can’t just opt out of life’, and I’m like, I’m not I just want to rest for a bit. Figure shit out. Sit on the couch with you. Watch bad movies. Eat takeout. Spent all our days growin’ up scrounging around and restless like a dervish. Spent the war watching your back. Spent seventy years doin’ god knows what. Let me watch fuckin’ Netflix with my best friend and get off my back, right?” Bucky rubs his eyes with his hands, before running them through his hair, leaving it sticking up in all directions. Steve’s hands itch to draw it, Bucky Barnes, long haired and lounging, bitter like lemons ‘til the clouds dissipate again.

“So maybe that’s what makes you happy,” Steve ponders aloud, dragging his eyes away from Bucky’s dishevelled head.

Bucky scoffs. “She ain’t lookin’ for our night time routine, punk, she wants me out in the world. Hell, she reckons I should download Tinder.”

Steve splutters and involuntarily jerks his hand away from Bucky’s ankle. Bucky whines, and Steve returns his touch. “Tinder?” Steve asks.

“I think – ” Bucky says, conspiratorially like, “that she wants to get me laid. Welcome to the twenty first century! With a bang, no less.”

Steve snorts. “You thinkin’ about it?”

Bucky sort of shrugs. “Nah. Time was, I thought maybe I could have that. Even just for one night. Now I think – who’d have me? ‘case you haven’t noticed, I’m kinda damaged goods.”

Without thinking, Steve says, “I would.” He panics. “And so would tons of other people too,” he amends.

“Nice try, Stevie, but if you didn’t wanna jump me in 1940, you ain’t gonna want to now,” Bucky muses, voice almost sounding careless.

“And give myself an asthma attack in the process? There’s sexy,” Steve says, treading the ground carefully. It feels like they’ve moved into a middle territory, half way between hypothetical and reality. Like any wrong move could have him crashing through thin ice.

“If anyone could make asthma sexy, it’d’ve been you,” Bucky says, not quite looking at him. “Remember after, when you could breathe again and you’d huddle up beside me, and you’d fall asleep on my shoulder? Never could sleep right those nights, lookin’ at you, like you were some fuckin’ angel fallen from heaven. Didn’t want to forget it. Shit irony, right?”

“Ain’t no angel, never was,” Steve says, reeling a little. “And hey, you didn’t forget. Or – you did, but, you’re here now. We’re here now.”

“And you ain’t falling asleep on my shoulder no more,” Bucky points out. “See, that made me happy. Not the asthma part, but just – you being there. Hell, you bein’ here now. But – but it’s like, I know it ain’t what it was. Or – I know that before, we couldn’t – I’m not sayin’ it right. Before there were laws. They coulda hurt you. And you’d’ve gone down fightin’ but there ain’t no victory in that, not really. Not when you end up dead. Now? Now there’s nothing – no reason why not, and still – I can’t. And you – you wouldn’t. Want to. Want that. With me. So, Tinder. Or somethin’. I don’t know, you know she messes with my head. Ignore me.”

“Buck,” Steve says, careful, quiet. “Buck, are you sayin’ – ”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” Bucky cuts him off, voice clipped. End of discussion, right?

Steve presses on. “No, tell me if I’m wrong, but you – us, you wanted that? Even back then? Now? That would’ve made you happy? Me?”

Bucky lets out a long sigh. “Fuck, Stevie, now you’re gonna be all self-sacrificing and be like, noble and shit and I ain’t usin’ you like that. Or you’re gonna let me down gentle like, and I don’t know which is worse to be honest. Bein’ humoured or being turned down. It’s just shit. Just forget it.”

“You brought it up,” Steve points out.

“Yeah, and I’m regretting it now,” Bucky says, pulling his feet away from Steve’s lap and drawing them up to his knees. He inches himself upwards into a sitting position, every inch the cornered animal.

“Bucky – ” Steve tries. Because he wants, god, how he wants, and he never knew he could, was allowed to, but maybe, maybe he is, and maybe Bucky’s trying to tear that away from him because he doesn’t believe he can have that, because he doesn’t believe Steve would want that. But god, how Steve wants. “Bucky, do you remember after the asthma attacks? Before I fell asleep? How you’d run your fingers through my hair and tell me dumb shit that had happened to you that day? And your voice’d be like the waves, ebbing and flowing through me, and I’d feel it in my chest, because we were so close, your words echoing through me, vibrating inside me. And your hand in my hair, like it was nothin’ to you, but it felt like the closest thing to heaven to me, the closest thing I ever felt. I always wondered – always thought, what if one day your hand wasn’t in my hair, what if it was like when you’d kiss the girls goodnight, ya know, holding my chin so that you could angle your mouth just perfect to mine? What’d that feel like? What’d it be like to kiss you? When you woke up, with stubble on your cheeks, would it feel like sandpaper or would it be soft? Or when you’d just shaved and I could see that dimple in your chin, whether I’d be able to feel it with my tongue, that tiny bump and curve? And I thought – dammit, I can’t – never, but, with your hand in my hair, your words in my veins, I figured it’d be enough. Having that. Wasn’t everything. But it had to be.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a long time. Steve doesn’t look at him, doesn’t really look at anything. Doesn’t hardly dare breathe.

“I made you happy?” Bucky asks, finally.

Steve breathes out. “Every day. Every single day. Then. And now. Having you here – getting you back. I miss those damned asthma attacks because I miss the after. But it’s okay. Maybe – god, Bucky, maybe we don’t need an excuse. To touch. To – I don’t even know what I’m asking for. Whatever you’re willing to give. As little or as much. If you want it too, I would never turn you away. You have to know that.”

“I’m not him,” Bucky says, voice slow, as though he’s thinking the words and saying them in tandem, edging them out, testing them.

“You think I haven’t changed either?” Steve replies, and Bucky snorts out a laugh.

“Guess so, punk. But still. It’s – you can do better than me.”

“Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe you’re it for me. Maybe you always have been.”

Bucky uncurls a little more, and Steve inches slightly towards him, and Bucky lifts his feet to put them back into Steve’s lap. Carefully, Steve finds Bucky’s ankle bone again, and rubs a thumb over it.

“You want this? Really and truly? Not just to be kind?” Bucky asks, fiddling with a stray thread on the couch with his metal hand.

“Not just to be kind. Not out of any sense of guilt or duty. Because it’s you. It’s always been you.” Steve moves his hand upwards, ghosting over Bucky’s sweat pant covered calf, feeling the shiver that runs through Bucky as he does so. He rests his hand on Bucky’s knee, a hold that’s barely there at all.

Bucky places his right hand over Steve’s, and the heat of it is like nothing Steve’s ever felt before. Steve turns his hand over, and finds the slots between Bucky’s fingers where his fit. Bucky shakes his head.

“You’re insane,” he murmurs. And Steve grins.

“It’s been said.”

“So I put my hand on your chin, like with the girls,” Bucky prompts, and moves his left hand to do just that. Steve’s breathing catches, and he nods shakily. The metal is cold, but not as cold as he’d imagined it’d be. Bucky leans in closer, the angle awkward. “And I guess, well, I haven’t shaved, so I guess you’ll find out – ” he mumbles, mostly to himself. He licks his lips. Steve’s eyes follow the movement intently. With Bucky’s hand on his jaw, he doesn’t dare move, knowing what comes next. What he said comes next.

There’s what he imagined, and there’s the reality. And the reality is a softness, barely there, pressure and warmth and closeness and Bucky being so there, so present, so real in that moment that Steve forgets to kiss back. Bucky pulls away after a moment, and casts his eyes away. He drops his hand from Steve’s chin, dejected.

Steve surges forward, almost falling off the couch himself, and without finesse his mouth finds Bucky’s, like it’s the last thing he’ll do, like he’s been starving all his life and finally someone has offered him a reprieve. He kisses like he’s going to die if he stops, but it feels like he’s going to die anyway, because nothing this good lets you walk away still breathing. Bucky tenses for a second, before responding with everything he’s got, open mouthed and wet tongued, filthy and longed for and eager. His hand finds Steve’s jaw again, holding so tight that Steve can feel the bruises, and he pushes into it, pulls Bucky closer, snakes a hand into Bucky’s hair and pulls and tries to make them into one being, existing through touch and taste and sensation alone.

Violence fades to softness, and the kisses turn from desperate to a sense of peace rarely found. They smile into them, blushes high on each of their cheeks. Finally, Bucky pulls away.

“I know,” he says. He grins, wide and bright, lips vibrant red and wet.

“What do you know?” Steve asks, chasing forward to kiss him again. Bucky pushes him away, letting out a laugh.

“I know what makes me happy. What always made me happy. It’s you. Idiot. It’s always been you. She totally knew that. Fuck, she’s going to be so smug. I can’t tell her that. Stevie, you’ve ruined me. Stevie – ” and then he captures Steve’s lips again, kissing between huffs of laughter.

*

“I’m gonna say I took up knitting,” Bucky says, a while later, legs tangled with Steve’s, hand petting at Steve’s hair. Steve is too blissed out to comprehend him and just hums in agreement. “Yeah, knitting makes me happy. That’s what I’ll say.”

Steve pulls him closer, resting his head on Bucky’s shoulder. It’s not the same, as before, but dammit, it’ll fucking well do.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh wow, it's been a while since I actually finished a fic, huh? Well, I promised myself I'd write this, and then I saw it was National Writing Day and figured I had no real excuse. I really hope you like it, I'm a teensy bit proud of it, but that might just be the post-writing afterglow. Kudos and comments, you know how it goes. And you can find me on tumblr at transbucky.tumblr.com if you are that way inclined. Thanks for reading, you're nifty.


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